A major road work project has taken over another block of the historic French Quarter, slowing business and snarling traffic just as one of New Orleans’ busiest seasons for tourists kicks off.
The Sewerage & Water Board’s more than $9 million project to replace 115-year-old water mains near Jackson Square began in August, shutting down one of the famed neighborhood’s most iconic blocks on St. Peter Street between Chartres and Royal streets.
Then, on Sept. 22, the same towering fencing that typically encloses the agency’s work appeared on the normally busy strip of Decatur Street between Gov. Nicholls Street and Ursulines Avenue.
The massive project, which has left streets and intersections impassable to cars, is expected to take a year to complete, said Ceara Labat, a spokesperson for the S&WB. Decatur between Gov. Nicholls and Ursulines will be closed “for a minimum of five months,” she said.
All the digging, repairing, and repaving has stopped tourists from entering businesses looking to recover from the typically slow summer season, and has raised concerns among business owners and neighborhood advocates.
Ashley Li, owner of Zhang Bistro on Decatur Street, said that visits to her restaurant are down 40% since the work started.
“I’m scared we’re going to go out of business,” said Li. “I don’t know that we have savings for after a couple months.”
Li and other businesses owners have spent the last few weeks trying to find ways to drum up customers — posting signs and decorations along the barricades, including, outside Zhang Bistro, an interactive “wish wall” where passersby can write their hopes and dreams on multicolored strips of paper.
“Please let the construction end soon,” reads one paper strip. “I wish I could fly over this fence,” another reads. They are posted alongside wishes unrelated to the chaos on Decatur Street: for the Saints to go to the Superbowl, for “world peace,” for “$1,000,000 please!”
Li’s business partner, Lily Soniat, had the idea to adapt the Buddhist practice of the wishing tree to the restaurant’s current predicament.
“Life gets difficult, so we pray and we make a wish,” said Li. “In Asia, we put it on a tree — but (here), we put it on the fence.” The restaurant is also hosting a “Nightmare on Decatur Street” party this month.
A few stores down at the handicrafts store Dead on Decatur, Michelle Marquis said that business is even slower now than it was during the summer.
“I also worry that it’s not going to be finished before Mardi Gras,” said Marquis. “And you know how much that’s going to impact us.”
The project was always going to cause pain for businessowners, but a months-long delay of its start from May to July has frustrated owners who say that beginning the work during the already-slow summer would have lessened the blow during peak tourist season.
The work was delayed due to the water level of the Mississippi River, which rose above the maximum height at which subsurface construction projects near the river is permitted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Labat said.
Two more blocks along Decatur, between Ursulines Avenue and Dumaine Street, are set to be fenced off in the coming months, Labat said. S&WB’s work will begin there once a gas line replacement project by Delta Utilities is completed.
Delta Utilities’ work between Dumaine and St. Philip street is expected to be completed by the end of next week, said spokesperson Sarah Porteous. The utility’s work between St. Philip and Ursulines is expected to be completed by the end of November.
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